Keith Embry

     Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.

For those of you who aren't aware of what happened... 

     Late on Friday, March 12th Keith was in the garage working on the S10. He was welding a new exhaust system underneath when a spark caught his pant leg on fire. (Since he doesn't have a lot of patience he didn't wait until other people were available to help him and since it was almost 2 am no one was aware of what was happening or could help him.) He wasn't able to pat the fire out with his hands but luckily he was able to get himself out from under the truck and get to the garden hose right outside the door to hose himself down and put out the fire. When he came in the house he didn't bother to wake me and tell me what happened. Instead he stripped down and hung his leg over the side of the tub and scrubbed it down with a washcloth, washing off much of the burned skin. When he finished with that he woke me and asked if we had any burn cream. I told him we didn't but we needed to take him to the ER if he burned himself. He insisted that wasn't necessary and proceeded to get gauze out and began wrapping it. As I got closer to help him I noticed a tremendous amount of skin missing and again told him he had to be treated at the ER. He refused to go and instead got in bed with his right leg wrapped in gauze from the top of his thigh down to his ankle. 

     I fully expected that the pain would become too much and he would finally ask to go the ER overnight. Instead, the next morning he asked for my help rewrapping his leg. I told him the only thing I would help with was taking him to the ER to get treated. Grudgingly he agreed to go. 

     At Trinity, Keith was fortunate to be seen by a burn doctor who previously worked the burn unit at University of Iowa. She informed us that his right leg had 2nd and 3rd degree burns and would require surgery and that he needed to be transferred to the University of Iowa. Within a few hours he had been transferred to Iowa City and was being assessed by the burn surgeons.